Marco Emilio

Various social ontology inquiry trends have formed close ties with empirical social research, employing a range of methods to pursue diverse purposes. For instance, while emancipatory perspectives have aimed to develop new conceptual resources to address social change, others have emphasized the salience of analyzing modelling tools for an effective understanding of the modification of social worlds. With this in mind, systematically examining how applied social science research plans and manages interventions might be beneficial to different theoretical stances. Following this line of reasoning, it is worth noting that some applied social science fields have recently investigated the impact environmental crises have had in terms of climate and intergenerational justice. New social risks and inequalities are often elicited by the interaction between climate change and mitigation/adaptation strategies, such as ecological transition. Furthermore, new phenomena (such as climate vulnerability) and entities (e.g., carbon credits) are the outcomes of conflictual relational processes. To cope with these challenges, eco-social inquiry is exploring the need to implement more “ecological” institutions, such as a sustainable welfare system. Nonetheless, based on the theses on social powers formulated by Åsa Burman, it remains unclear if eco-social applied research constitutes a coherent attempt to transform oppressive relationships. Similarly, developing ecologically sustainable institutions demands clarifying how their etiology and teleology can interrelate, as analyzed by Francesco Guala and Frank Hindriks. Considering this, my aim is twofold. Firstly, to evaluate how the perspectives of Burman on social powers and Guala and Hindriks on institutions could improve the current eco-social research concerning climate-related social vulnerabilities. Second, I will examine the possibility of a distinct kind of epistemic social power (enacted by scholars, professionals and practitioners) which, by enhancing the conceptual and epistemic transparency of social kinds and instances, opens up new abilities for agents, partially through legitimizing obligations, social norms, and structures. Following these broad objectives, I will examine Burman’s account and highlight some issues that fall between its interpretation of contestation, conflict, and opacity, and Hindriks’ descriptions of resilience, securing values and fairness of sustainable institutions. Hence, I will examine some conflictual cases of new eco-social risks where deep uncertainty surrounding decision-making hinders collective actions and challenges defining values, norms and powers that all involved parties perceive as legitimate. In the third phase, drawing on the contributions of Sally Haslanger on social practices, I will draft an analysis of the role of epistemic practices in enabling new capacities for cohabitation in contexts impacted by climate change and legitimizing new eco-social norms, structures and roles. I will then elaborate on this analysis to provide an understanding of the development and interdependence of diverse social powers, suggesting that, in order to combat oppressions related to climate change, epistemic social power and intentionally driven epistemic practices are essential. Nonetheless, when it comes to the perceived fairness of eco-social norms, formal and informal roles and associated powers, different relational approaches to managing social interventions produce significantly different outcomes. Finally, I will outline some potential avenues for future research concerning the relationship between social powers, resilient institutions and collective epistemic agencies.

Il capitolo esplora le possibilità teoretiche della nozione di cooperazione non-ideale, situandola nel contesto delle attuali ricerche in ontologia sociale e in relazione alle indagini sull’intenzionalità collettiva e individuale. Attraverso un’analisi di taglio interdisciplinare, viene problematizzata la dicotomia tra cooperazione e competizione, evidenziando come esse siano di frequente intrecciate nella vita sociale e istituzionale. Partendo dai contributi teorici di J.R. Searle e R. Tuomela, si analizzano i limiti delle letture idealizzate della cooperazione che trascurano aspetti conflittuali e contestuali delle interazioni sociali. In particolare, la distinzione tra diverse modalità di cooperazione (I-mode, pro-group I-mode, e we-mode) e la nozione di we-reasoning sono utilizzate per comprendere le trasformazioni dell’agency individuale e collettiva. Il testo integra prospettive filosofiche con casi empirici, come il cooperative learning e i giochi da tavolo, per illustrare l’interdipendenza tra competizione e cooperazione. A partire da questo sfondo, la teoria del striving play di C. Thi Nguyen e la nozione di agency transformation di Petersson vengono riprese come chiavi interpretative per comprendere il passaggio tra frame individualistici e collettivi. Tali evoluzioni sono inoltre spesso mediate da artefatti sociali e culturali che strutturano l’interazione tra soggetti, attraverso specifiche architetture relazionali. Viene quindi proposta una visione non-idealizzata della cooperazione che include la complessità delle interazioni sociali, considerando la tensione tra consenso e conflitto, offrendo strumenti concettuali per comprendere come artefatti e strutture sociali influenzino le possibilità di azione collettiva.

Che cosa significa cooperare? La cooperazione umana assume forme, scopi e contesti estremamente diversi, spaziando dalla caccia di gruppo alla costruzione di scuole in progetti internazionali, dalla collaborazione terapeutica alla trasmissione di tradizioni culturali. Questo volume ne esplora la ricchezza, mettendo in luce come tale fenomeno sia centrale nella socialità umana e nelle dinamiche intersoggettive. Attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare, che coinvolge scienze psicologiche, pedagogiche e filosofiche, il testo offre una riflessione ampia su come l’essere umano si coordini per affrontare problemi complessi e generare forme di solidarietà. Il volume si propone di mettere in dialogo prospettive diverse, costruendo ponti tra discipline che regolarmente interagiscono in contesti teorici, empirici e applicativi. Si indagano le precondizioni comunicative, relazionali e mentali della cooperazione, esplorando anche le implicazioni etiche che permettono di rispondere alle sfide complesse delle società contemporanee. //// Forms of Cooperation What does it mean to cooperate? Human cooperation takes extremely diverse forms, purposes and contexts, ranging from group hunting to school building in international projects, from therapeutic collaboration to the transmission of cultural traditions. This volume explores its richness, highlighting how this phenomenon is central to human sociality and intersubjective dynamics. The text offers a broad reflection on how human beings coordinate to address complex problems and generate forms of solidarity through an interdisciplinary approach involving psychological, pedagogical and philosophical sciences. The volume aims to bring different perspectives into dialogue, building bridges between disciplines that regularly interact in theoretical, empirical and applied contexts. The communicative, relational and mental preconditions of cooperation are investigated while exploring the ethical implications of responding to the complex challenges of contemporary societies.

Interweaving hazards in environmental crises can be framed as a wicked problem as well as an opportunity for the interdisciplinary contribution of philosophical analysis on risk. Due to nonlinear mechanisms and contextual variations, this shows the importance of inquiring about contrasting assessments of vulnerability and the demand for comprehensive collective actions in coping with climate risks. The article examines how to address overlapping ecological and social risks, focusing on decision-making in the context of local energy transition projects through the lens of collective epistemic responsibility. By analyzing disciplinary accounts and exploring the links between assessment and decision-making further research directions for collective risk prevention strategies will be outlined, and some implications for interdisciplinary investigation on risk and expertise will be sketched.

According to some philosophers and social scientists, mainstream economic theories currently play an unprecedented role in shaping human societies. This phenomenon can be linked to the dissemination of methodological individualism, where common goods are interpreted as reducible to aggregates of individuals' well-being. Nonetheless, some emergent difficulties of economics in coping with global institutional issues have encouraged some authors to revise that paradigm. In the last three decades, there has been a parallel growing philosophical interest in investigating social sciences' epistemological and ontological foundations. Unfortunately, these two research trends have often not communicated systematically enough to understand the specific ontology of collective aims. It is still unclear whether some irreducible social goods exist and how the answer to this question can set up a consistent understanding of cooperative actions. This dissertation addresses this issue, drawing on philosophical investigations about collective intentionality. It claims that a coherent ontological taxonomy of irreducible and reducible social goods is theoretically viable and can reframe prevailing approaches to collective action dilemmas influenced by the traditional economic categorisation of goods. The research begins by analysing how the influential theory of public goods has paved the way for some social and moral impasses. Furthermore, some theoretical proposals suggesting the existence of relational goods and common-pool resources are scrutinised. Hence, a refutation of the ontological reduction of all social goods to individual ones is developed, arguing that a specific form of cooperation, grounded in we-intentions and we-reasoning, shows the plausibility of the existence of some kinds of irreducible collective goods. Expanding on that view, a refinement of this categorisation of social goods is put forward by underlying the function of some relational entities, such as trust and shared sensemaking processes, in making cooperation robust in uncertain environments. Finally, by applying the taxonomy to collective action gridlocks regarding climate change, digital information, and public education, the consistency of this hypothesis is tested, showing that a pluralistic ontological account of social goods might improve the moral understanding of current social dilemmas.